camera / video camera recommendations?

[Shanti S.]

Looking for suggestions for a video camera for documenting and marketing real estate - don't want to spend a lot of $

Wide angle is most important here - for a still camera, you want at least 24mm wide (35mm equivalent) to be able to take good interior pictures. Most point and shoot cameras don't even come close. I use a Sony DSCR1, overkill for the purpose but I didn't buy it for real estate - I've been into still photography for decades.

I know much less about video cams - can anyone suggest some cams that go very wide for not big $?

Yes I could spend some time researching but thought this might be of interest to the community.

It always amazes me how most of the pictures I run across for houses / cars / big ticket items people want to sell are just not good. My ebay and craig's list stuff always seems to do really well because I provide a lot of very good photos. I know somehow this will help in my real estate as well.

Technique and basic knowledge of lighting and composition are of course very very important, but in this case there's no substitute for a nice wide angle piece of glass.